updated 10:00 pm EST, Tue December 11, 2012

High Tech Spectrum Coalition formed to spotlight issues

The High Tech Spectrum Coalition, a 'supergroup' of technology companies led by Apple and Samsung, petitioned Congress on Tuesday to provide more broadcast bandwidth for smartphones and tablet computers. The sent letter encourages the House and Senate technology committees to evaluate auctioning some of the spectrum currently in use by the federal government.

Signatories to the letter include Alcatel-Lucent, Apple, Cisco, Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion and newly-joined Samsung. "Now is the time to ensure the incentive auctions are as robust and successful as possible at liberating spectrum," the letter says. "We should also turn our collective attention on ways to reap the economic benefits of underutilized federal spectrum assets."

The HTSC believes that the scheduled spectrum auctions are inadequate for future wireless broadband needs. The letter warns that it is impossible to "engineer our way out of this problem" with technological advances.

These companies complaints would be more impressive if they were actually doing something to make cleverer use of existing spectrum.

One obvious example is their one-to-one narrowcasting of content that thousands want and that could be broadcast in the data stream of existing digital television channels. Popular sports and newscasts, magazines and newspapers, and even OS upgrades could be broadcast, automatically stored until used, and constantly updated. It'd be an excellent way to expand subscription models, with the money saved by users not having to use cellular bandwidth applied to the subscription. It'd be particularly useful in the core of major cities where spectrum is most in demand.